


Helen was only a childhood name

by MellonLord



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Gen, My First Fanfic, Roleswap AU, in which helen eddis gets some attention
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 16:11:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11604168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MellonLord/pseuds/MellonLord
Summary: Helen's family died much sooner, so Gen's adopted her. She takes after her new mother.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> shit i guess i'll just rewrite an entire book, that sounds fun.
> 
> helen in gen's place still romances attolia, in case you're wondering, and gen in helen's still falls for sophos. not tagged for their ships because reaching that point in this fic seems overly optimistic.

Helen’s brothers died when she was six years old, and her father who was Eddis followed shortly after, leaving Helen as heir apparent. Her father’s eldest brother, the then Minister of War, became Prime Minister and king regent until such time as Helen was old enough to either take the throne herself or formally defer it to a potential husband, her uncle, or one of his sons. She was taken in by her uncle’s family for the time being, while her infant sister was taken in by their duchess aunt.

  
Helen bonded with her new family very quickly. She spent a lot of time with her foster mother, who comforted her and distracted her from her grief, but also taught her how to make proper remembrances to the gods. She quickly came to idolize the woman. As she grew, the Queen Thief showed her the tricks of her trade and told her the stories that went along with it, alongside her youngest son Gen, who was particularly fascinated by the myths but too small to join in the risky stunts his mother shared with Helen.

  
The Queen Thief’s father, the formal King’s Thief, also took an interest in Helen’s education in this regard, taking her on her first instructive international journey when she was nine years old – they went to Attolia, where he showed her the hypocaust passages in one of the lesser megarons and laid a felled tree across the Seperchia. A few years later he would take her to visit the king’s own megaron, and she would catch the princess dancing alone in the garden and watch her from the trees with feelings she couldn’t quite name bubbling in her chest.

  
She insisted that her eldest foster brother Temenus teach her what he learned in soldier training, though she declined to enter it formally herself, and during their amateur sparring sessions she broke two of his fingers and he broke her nose.

  
Stenides was the second eldest, and he bored Helen. He was quiet, polite, and seemed to love mechanical parts more than his own flesh and blood. For some incomprehensible reason Gen seemed to love being around him, though, so sometimes when he had a hard day she’d smuggle him into Stenides’ workshop and they would spy on him from the vents or under a worktable.

  
Her eldest foster sister Hippolyta was already off and married by the time Helen joined the family, but as she grew up there Hippolyta invited her hunting on several occasions and was the one to teach her how to use a bow. Helen learned to love riding horseback. She became an incredible shot, and Hippolyta rewarded her with cured meats.

  
Antiope, her second eldest foster sister, taught her how to play chess and cards and who to talk to (or spy on) to get the latest gossip and rumours around the court. The Prime Minister was surprised and pleased when she somehow heard about minor insurrections or unusual harvests before he did. Antiope would eventually marry the eldest son of the Minister of Trade, and since he worked in the palace they lived in the residencies nearby and she would still be able to attend the court where she wished.

  
The youngest sister, Pythia, was very near Helen’s own age and was always standoffish around her, picking heated arguments over trivial details, and Helen did her best to avoid her.

  
Gen looked up to Helen, and she in turn came to admire his talents for swords and reading and trouble. They defended each other from their more troublesome cousins, and shared a room next to the library (he liked the books, she liked the quiet). When he had strange dreams she was the first to hear of them, and he had many. Gen swore some of them were visions of the future.

  
Neither of them was prepared when their mother died. In the shock that followed, Helen locked herself into her rooms and refused to let anyone in for days. Gen, locked out, slipped his family’s grip and went to cry himself to sleep on the palace roof. That was when he first met the gods. They told him that it was his destiny to become Eddis, and granted him visions of a far-distant future where the Little Peninsula was peaceful and prosperous . When he woke up, still long before dawn, Moira came to sit next to him and stayed for the remainder of the night. She would continue to come to him in his private moments when he needed someone to talk to for years to come. When Helen finally opened her door, she asked for her grandfather. He came promptly, and when he crossed her threshold he found her sitting on her bed with his entire private collection of fibula pins laid out beside her. She told him, her eyes still red from crying, her hair a mess, but certainty radiating from her every fibre, that she meant to follow her mother’s footsteps and succeed him as the King’s Thief. She would reject her life as Helen, the princess heir to the Eddisian throne, and take on a new life as Eugenides, the thief heir to the family name. He knelt in front of her, took out the cloak pin he was currently using, placed it in her hand, and told her that this was going to make distinguishing her from her little brother very confusing. Then he hugged her.

  
After that, her grandfather took her out on many more journeys to Attolia, to Sounis, to Magyar, to Melenze, to Ferria, to Zaboar. Eugenides learned how to be unheard and unfelt. She learned how to blend into a crowd, and how to do an impression of a member of any class, from an array of countries. She began to amass her own collection, not of fibula pins, but of stolen daggers – people always tried to conceal them so it posed a challenge, and she felt much safer when they were in her possession. When they were discovered in the rafters at a Melenzian engagement party, a woman pulled out her hairpins to reveal their sharpened tips and hurl them after Eugenides and her grandfather with frightening accuracy, and afterwards (after stitching up her arm) Eugenides began collecting those as well.

  
Gen was clearly god-touched, and upon Eugenides’ formal agreement he became the heir to the throne, though he could not actually take it properly while his father still held the regency, his elder brothers still lived, and he was still under-aged. In the meantime he studied politics, policy, and religion, and began regularly attending court sessions and voicing his opinions. By the time he reached his teens, most people in the palace called him Eddis.

  
Their grandfather was old. More and more he had been sitting out Eugenides’ ventures in nearby inns. Eventually he became too frail to leave the Eddisian palace, and not long after fell down the courtyard stairs to his death. All his grandchildren mourned him, but especially his youngest granddaughter, who piled the alter of her namesake god with fibula pins, hair ornaments, and fine daggers in prayer and remembrance. As her final theft from him, she took her grandfather’s title, and was known then on as the King’s Thief of Eddis.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> remember:  
> eugenides = helen  
> eddis = gen

Eddis allowed Sounis and Attolia to believe that Helen was still the heir for the time being, since the new state of affairs was complicated and tenuous (that is, vulnerable), and when the king of Sounis came to visit and negotiate for territories around Irkes and lighter trade tariffs both Eugenides and Eddis went to dinner with him. Eugenides even allowed the palace maids (and Antiope) to fuss over her and deck her out in a complicated layered robe, complicated layered hairstyle, and complicated layered makeup – she looked nothing like herself. Eddis laughed at her while they walked through the halls to the dining room. She raised her eyebrows at his own canary-toned regal getup, but had to admit that it was more in character. At the door they both lost all appearances of humour, and over dinner they lost all feeling of it as well, as it became apparent exactly what sort of man Sounis was, even with his magus doing his utmost to mitigate the damage. In addition to his overall manner, his eyes kept straying to Eugenides in a frankly alarming way.

  
That night Eugenides did some sneaking, and by late next morning everyone who had eaten the imported fish at dinner (and, coincidentally, took tea with their breakfast) was quite nauseous and unable to attend any more social functions for the day. Eugenides and Eddis both suffered this ailment (allegedly), as did Sounis, his attendants, Eugenides’ aunt Livia’s entire family, Pythia, and several Eddisian ministers. While most recovered in 24 hours, Eugenides and Eddis remained sadly indisposed for the rest of Sounis’ stay.

Sounis’ marriage proposals started arriving after that. An alliance, he said, would strengthen both their countries, give them the power they needed to dissuade Attolia from heightening the aggressive behaviour it had taken towards its neighbours ever since its overshadowed princess unexpectedly became queen. The Prime Minister read these to his youngest children, stone-faced, finishing with, “we greatly anticipate meeting with Helen to discuss possible arrangements at your soonest convenience, and offer an audience this autumn before the snow falls on the mountain passes.”

  
Eddis, sitting sideways in his seat with his arms folded and his gaze fixed on the mountains outside the window, muttered, “Helen? Who’s that?”

  
“No idea,” said Eugenides, perched on the middle of the table and cleaning what had been the Minister of Agriculture’s ceremonial knife, “perhaps Sounis has the wrong address.”

  
The Prime Minister nodded his understanding. The reply to Sounis was polite, but definite. Sounis would not find the heir-wife he was looking for in Eddis. Sounis’ next letter, however was something else entirely.

  
“Hamiathes’ Gift?” asked Eugenides, “Does he really think we would bend for some mythical rock?” But Eddis had a deep frown, and after a moment he began to explain why Sounis’ assumption was not as far-fetched as it seemed. Eugenides listened with increasing alarm, until she leapt to her feet abruptly enough to make Eddis flinch and stormed out of the room.

  
It wasn’t the prospect of marriage that frightened her – she knew that that part of the threat was still without founding, since she was neither Helen nor the heir to the throne – but the power of kingmaking in Sounis’ hand deeply frustrated her on her brother’s behalf. The odds were stacked against him as it was. She believed, deep to her core, that he was meant to be Eddis, to lead Eddis; that it was right, far beyond being the will of some gods she didn’t fully believe in. That some rock in the hands of a greasy man down by the beach could convince the people otherwise was outrageous, a preposterous concept, a reality she would do anything to escape. She hopped off her bed and began pacing rapidly. She was going to have to do something about this. Just as she reached this conclusion, her bedroom door opened and the Prime Minister entered quietly.

  
“That was locked, you know.”

  
He only looked at her. “I wasn’t married to the Queen Thief for almost three decades for nothing.”

  
He emptied the bag he was carrying on her desk, and she was startled to see a stack of double weighted gold coins spill out. He continued, “And I know you weren’t her daughter for nothing. You’ve grown well.”

  
He turned to stand by the window, looking out. For a long moment they were silent, her looking sideways at him, him gazing serenely at the view. Then, “If Sounis can procure Hamiathes’ Gift by next year as he claims, we will be forced to recognize him as a chosen ruler of Eddis. It would be preferable, by far, to agree to the alliance he proposes. A marriage would indeed be the most immutable way to seal the contract, if not you then perhaps Philippus” her blood sister living with her aunt the duchess “or Pythia. Perhaps Agape.” He looked back at her. “When we have his council with Sounis next year and he presents the Gift, I and the other ministers will make any deal with him we can, and your brother who is Eddis’ chance at power will be lost. This will be the only way to preserve a stable throne in this country.”

  
She scowled at him, wanting to yell and argue or at least hit something, when her eyes was drawn again to the pile of gold on her desk. When she did speak, she said, “It’s a shame, really. If only there were an alternative.”

  
He nodded and turned to leave, but she stopped him with a hand on his arm.

  
“Stall the council as long as you can. Don’t let them make any promises. Don’t let Eddis think you’ve given up on him.”

  
He nodded again, patted her hand on his arm fondly, and pulled away. When he was gone, she paced for another half hour, muttering to herself, then swept up the coins and left as well. She, however, left through the window.


	3. Chapter 3

When the guards came to take me from my cell, I nearly fell off my bed, a chain wrapped around my foot holding me in place. I had only laid down in the first place so they would pass me by without paying any special attention, but I hadn’t imagined I would be the reason for their arrival. The guards reassured the tall man accompanying them that I was, in fact, the prisoner he was looking for, and he acquiesced. “All right. Take her out.”

  
He wanted to know my name.

  
I said, “Gen.” He wasn’t interested in more than that.

 

* * *

 

I had had my hair cut short some time before I went to prison, but during my stay there it had grown out again, and now it was a filthy limp mass that brushed my neck and fell in my face. I longed for a headband to hold it respectfully out of my way, but when the king of Sounis made his appearance to me I was glad I didn’t have one. It would have come out, for one thing, with all his grabbing my hair and throwing me around, but more importantly, he didn’t seem to recognize me this way. When he was making his colourful threats, he looked me straight in the face and did not know me.

 

* * *

 

After I mounted my horse with token protests and some fumbling (partly because I was stiff and discoordinated from prison, partly because no lower class thief is terribly familiar with riding) I took a moment to look around at our party.

  
“Hold on,” I said, and the magus standing nearby looked over.

  
“Do you mean you’re dragging me out gods-know-where, with just myself and four men?”

  
He sighed. “I’m not very well going to bring along one of the maids just to make you feel better, although I will admit this is less than ideal. If there had been a male thief available to us with half your… accomplishments, he would be here and you would still be in your cell.” I took a tiny bit of pride in that, even though I already knew that none of the other imprisoned thieves were worth their weight in shit.

  
He said, “We can still put you back, if that is truly what you want.”

  
I waited a moment to let him think I was thinking about it, then shook my head.

  
“I think I like it out here, actually. As long as none of you… decides you’re interested.”

  
His face took on an expression so grave I nearly laughed in it. “I will make you one promise, thief, and one alone. If any man on this journey mistreats you in that way, I will personally order him executed upon our return.”

  
I raised my eyebrows at the extremity of his statement, and wondered if it extended to himself. If he thought my honour was worth the death of the country’s only magus. If there was the slightest chance he did, perhaps I had misjudged him.

 

* * *

 

I was unused to riding. Our lunch wound up being close to two hours long as I waited for my legs to stop trembling and may have accidentally fallen asleep for a bit, and we made even worse time after it than before. I tried to strike up conversation with my travelling companions as we went. The magus’ two apprentices were wary of me – one was much younger, to the extent that I wondered if he ought to be riding on a horse by himself, and eyed me like some rare beast crawled out of the guts of the sacred mountain; the other was around my age, and regarded me with a confused sort of distaste, as if he couldn’t quite figure out how to add me up, but was certain that when he did at least some aspect of me would fall shamefully short of his regard. The soldier they’d brought along was a little better. His name was Pol, and he was a practical man in a way like my own father and eldest siblings, too busy keeping track of equipment and planning meals to worry about my social image, even if he was openly exasperated at my weakness and antics. We chatted about the weather. He told me the names of all the horses.

  
My wrists had been stinging since the hot sun had me sweating into the manacle sores there, and when the sun went down the chill slipped into my bones and made the wounds ache. I had tried to air them out in prison when I could. I would slip off my manacles for a day or even two at a time, holding them to my chest and turning my back when I heard guards approach. Still, I strongly suspected the sores I’d accrued were infected. I was staring at them, resisting the urge to pick at them, as we rode into the dark, carrying on all the way to a town the magus called Matinaea.

  
We dismounted, and Pol had a hold of my shoulder before I’d even passed over my horse’s (Nestor’s) reins to the stable boy. I wondered if it was to steady me or keep me from running off. I listened with interest as the magus introduced himself as a landowner to the owner of the local inn. I wouldn’t have pegged him as an easy liar, but the conjured details of his surveillance trip rolled off his tongue with such ease that I could tell he must have been rehearsing them as we rode. I did my best to hold myself as an esteemed assistant to a minor baron might, but Pol’s hand on my shoulder ruined the effect, and I tried to subtly shake it off. Then we passed the owner’s wife.

  
“That one,” she accused, pointing at me. “It’s that one that smells so awful, and he’s not coming into my wineroom and I won’t have him sleeping in any of my clean beds.”  
I knew I smelt terrible, looked terrible, but I also knew the only way I was going to get clean without passing through her wineroom was to strip under the tap out in the courtyard, and although my legs quaked with exhaustion I was not yet so done in that I would allow that sort of public humiliation to befall me on my first night in public in months.

  
“Please,” I said, “allow a woman a private bath. I’m very sorry for inconveniencing you” as if my being disgusting was any easier on me that it was on her “but if you’ll let me use the indoor baths I promise I won’t stop in the wineroom. I’ll sleep on the floor instead of a bed, if you prefer, ma’am.”

  
I hoped that dropping my gender might unbalance her enough to make her relent, and I hoped that our mutual exhaustion would be enough to discourage my companions from putting up a fight. From the slightly guilty glance the magus and Pol were sharing, I could see that they’d already fully intended for me to sleep on the ground and were only just now questioning their judgement. Good.

  
“It is very late,” I added hopefully, “and I only want to clean up and rest. My lordship, as well,” in case she had forgotten about the man waiting eagerly to pay her for our passage.

  
The landlady reassessed me, then glanced quickly at the magus, the door, and a sweeping view of everyone else in the room. Then she gave a long-suffering sigh and I knew that I had won. Wordlessly, she pinched a bit of my sleeve between her thumb and forefinger (I commended her for her bravery) and tugged me forward, through a doorway, past an empty dining room and into a hall, where she pushed me through a door at the very end. “Get yourself clean, then. I’ll see how you do.”

  
They really did have a private washroom, thank the gods. I stripped, worked the taps, and rinsed myself down before tugging a washcloth off the wall and scrubbing enthusiastically. I didn’t even want to look at the mess swirling down the drain, so I focused on my hair instead, rubbing at it with a rock-hard bar of soap and rinsing in a recursive cycle until I could run my fingers through it easily. Finally, satisfied, I looked down at my filthy heap of clothes in distaste.

  
“You don’t have a spare tunic, do you?” I asked the door. The door replied by easing open a few frightening inches (I hopped back until I stood into the tub, covering myself with my hands and cursing quietly) and closing behind a fresh stack of fabric.

  
“… Thanks,” I told it.

  
The clothes (shirts and trousers) were almost comically large on me, but they felt nice and smelled faintly of mint. They were the nicest thing anyone in Sounis had ever given me, I thought. The boots were going to be a problem, so I rinsed my old shoes under the tap, rubbed them down with a towel, and left the room with them in one hand, the new shoes in the other, and the rest of my old clothes and the towels piled on the floor.

  
The landlady regarded me critically. She pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket and dabbed at a spot under my jaw, then drew her hand away and sighed.

  
“I suppose it’ll do. You’re welcome to sleep on a bed, if you like.”

  
I doubted that, but it wasn’t her fault so I thanked her with winning smile, then allowed the elder of the magus’ students who was standing near the door to lead me to our room.

  
The younger student and Pol were already there, but not the magus. The young student rose from his seat on the bed as I entered, and told the elder, “The magus says I’ve got to go burn her clothes. Are they still in the washroom?” He looked at me. “Are those your old shoes? I’m probably meant to burn those too.”

  
He held out a hand but I ignored it. “The new shoes don’t fit. I’ll either get blisters, or they’ll fall right off my feet.”

  
“You could stuff the toes with spare socks,” suggested Pol, “I’ve got a few. The other pair doesn’t look like it’ll be much better for walking.” He snatched one from me and pushed a finger through the opening seam at the toe to prove his point. I had no special fondness of the shoes, so I grumbled my consent and handed them over to the younger student.

  
Pol had bread and cheese out, which he handed to me after I seated myself on the blanket laid on the floor. As I ate, the younger student returned and struck up a conversation with the elder about a poetry book they’d both read, until Pol caught me by the wrist and asked the younger one to go fetch a medical kit. I could see why he was concerned. In the lamplight, with a layer of grime washed away, the sores were alternately angry red, ghostly white, or in places puffy yellow. I suspected I knew what was coming, so I finished my dinner as quickly as possible.

  
I was right. It was for the best, but I yelled and cursed Pol out anyway. He could have asked first.

  
When he was done and my wrists were bandaged, I pulled away and drew my floor-blanket over myself, facing the wall in the semblance of a sulk. I was asleep in minutes.


	4. Chapter 4

In the morning I found that someone had chained my ankle to the foot of Pol’s bed. I briefly considered picking the lock, but then Pol was already waking up and the point was moot. After I’d washed my hair and arms again I had a heaping breakfast with the others in the wineroom. There was a pair of off-shift farmhands striking up a game of cards next to us, and since the magus was busy lecturing his students about the local flora and it didn’t seem like we’d be leaving anytime soon, I asked to join the game for the second round. I ate oranges from a nearby bowl as we played. They were betting small items – one had an old pocket watch, the other had a thin sash. After sparing a glance to make sure that the magus wasn’t paying attention, I offered up his compact mirror. I had won the sash and way eyeing a ring he had put up to replace it when the elder of the magus’ students asked, “What are you doing?”

  
I grinned apologetically at the farmhands while I pocketed the mirror and picked up the sash, then turned to the sneering young man. His name was Ambiades, I remembered.

  
“Just a bit of entertainment while I wait for you old ladies to finish discussing flowers.”

  
He gave me a surprisingly furious gaze. I found it oddly validating.

  
The landlady arrived to see if we wanted lunch packed just as I finished tying the sash around my head, and she paused to regard me with some surprise.

  
I gave her my best boyish grin (I was wearing trousers, so I felt I had license to be boyish). “I clean up nicely, don’t I?”

  
She ended up packing me a bundle for lunch, although the magus took it on the road and smacked me on the head for talking to strangers.

 

* * *

 

“Was prison really not so bad?”

  
Prison was an absolute shithole, but I looked at the asker of the question before answering. It was the younger of the magus’ students. I thought back to his earlier conversation with the magus and Ambiades; his name was Sophos. He was probably halfway between Eddis’ age and Philippus’, and I very much didn’t want to scare him off, but I also thought he deserved the truth.

  
“I may have said that to the landlady to make her feel better. It was pretty bad. Granted, most prisoners get their chains off a few days after they’re locked up, and most prisoners are allowed out into the courtyard once in a while, so my experience might have been somewhat substandard. I ought to leave a bad review with the tourism board.”  
I grinned at him in an attempt to add levity to my statement, though from the uneasy look on his face I don’t think it worked.

  
He said, “If I can ask, what was your crime?” Then he seemed to think better of it, blushing furiously and stammering, “I’m sorry, don’t answer that, it was terribly rude of me.”  
I blinked at him. “The magus didn’t tell you ?” He shook his head. I glanced at the magus and decided I’d been smacked for loose lips enough for one morning. “Then I probably shouldn’t either.”

  
I asked him if the magus brought him on many mysterious criminal adventures and got a smile out of him. He told me no, but he had taken him on a few regular trips north to the border with Melenze, and once by ship all the way to Cymorene Island. I made appropriately impressed noises. We carried on chatting about the places he’d been until the magus called for Sophos to join him up ahead.

  
As I cheerily waved him off I wondered why the magus hadn’t told the others what I had stolen. Perhaps he was too embarrassed. The thought warmed my heart, and I grinned. I wondered what they thought I had done. Perhaps Ambiades assumed I was a murderer, or Pol assumed I had been caught joining the army under false pretences. I hoped none of them thought it was tax fraud.

 

* * *

 

We trotted our horses in the afternoon and made it to town by nightfall, but I was dead tired when we got there. I ate my dinner quietly, and fell asleep at the table while I was contemplating asking for seconds.

  
At breakfast the next morning Pol and the magus chewed Sophos out for sleeping late. They said that sleeping lightly was a necessary virtue in a soldier, and I nearly choked on my oatmeal as I thought of my brother Temenus. I wanted to tell them, sometimes sleeping through canonfire only served to make you more alert in the long run when your division was laying a month-long siege, but since Temenus wasn’t in my Sounisian record I decided to focus on my oatmeal instead. I could have made a terrific soldier.

 

* * *

  
That day there was a breeze to take the uncomfortable edge off the sun. We left the wagon path that had carried us between towns this far, and it was becoming apparent that we were heading for the mountains. As we climbed into the foothills, I held onto the saddle in front of me with my hands to ease the strain of gripping my horse with my legs. I had been able to keep my arms reasonably strong in prison, but I hadn’t been able to take off the shackles on my ankles to do the same with my legs so now I often felt unbalanced. Although I would be very glad to be among the peaks once again I was a little concerned that if we came to hiking up and down cliffs my legs would give way and I would tumble to my doom. I wondered if our goal was in Eddis after all.

  
I was in a good mood. Under my breath, I began to sing a song I’d heard in one of the lower-city alehouses in Sounis. Ambiades noticed. He hissed at me that it was an entirely inappropriate tune for polite company, and by his blush I could tell that he knew it. I grinned at him. “Perhaps you should try being a little ruder, then.”  
He scowled at me, and I held my smile but stopped singing.

  
When he didn’t pull away after a moment I took it as an invitation to strike up a conversation. “I’ve been wondering, why does the magus have two apprentices? Surely you can’t both succeed him? Is it some sort of competition?”

  
He offered one of his usual unpleasant facial expressions. “Becoming the magus isn’t everyone’s ideal end goal. There’s little monetary profit in it, for one, and it is an extremely high-risk job.” High risk of assassination, I understood, or capture by some foreign power. “We are both from reasonably noble families; if either of us inherits our family’s name, he won’t be able to become magus as well.” He hesitated. I could tell he wasn’t being truthful, and wondered if he was going to correct himself.

  
“… Sophos is more likely to get an inheritance than I. I will become the magus eventually, unless one of us changes our minds before that.” The magus might change his mind because he didn’t seem to like Ambiades very much, at least not compared to Sophos, though why Ambiades might change his mind was a mystery to me. He didn’t sound very happy about the prospect. Surely the pay wasn’t that much of a factor to him, clear nobility that he was.

  
“The magus holds a lot of power in Sounis. Doesn’t he advise the king in pretty much all his state decisions? That sounds like a better deal than owning a patch of farmland to me.”

  
There was one of those faces again. I really ought to number them, he seemed to draw from a very small pool, and I wondered whether I would need two hands to tally them all. This would be Ambiades Face Number Two: Scorn with a Side of Defensiveness.

  
“And what would you know about power and family legacies? You’re just some dirty shrew that crawled out of the gutter with illusions of grandeur. Some of us have things to live up to, things to protect! It’s not just about how much time I’m allowed to bask directly in the king’s glory.”

  
I considered snapping back at him (he had so many openings) but then I looked back up at the mountains ahead and found within myself a hidden supply of patient benevolence, and with great effort gave Ambiades the benefit of the doubt. Instead, I asked, “Would you like to hear about my family? My legacy?”

  
This would be Ambiades Face Number Three: Thinly Veiled Surprise with Lurking Suspicion. It shifted to Face Number Four: Attempt to Find a Way Around Aristocratic Etiquette to Politely Do Something He Suspected He Shouldn’t, which I took as encouragement to go ahead.

  
“I am a thief because my adoptive mother was a thief. So was her father before her, and his father before him, and so on. It’s a source of pride for our family. My mother was quite famous for her skills, although admittedly only among a very specific circle, and I aim to live up to her memory. We don’t steal for wealth. We steal for honour.”

  
I had fake details prepared about my family, but I preferred not to delve into them. I would like to keep this moment as honest as I could.

  
Ah, but there was Face Number One: Suffering through the Idiocy of Others, and although I knew what was coming before he opened his mouth it still stung enough to finally ruin my mood.

  
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Stealing things is a criminal act, not a career path! Your mother probably lied about a family history you couldn’t confirm to justify snatching some extra silver illegally, and if you believed that it’s a miracle you weren’t caught sooner.”

  
“Yeah, well, everyone likes Sophos better than you,” I snapped, and yanked my horse’s reins to make her drop well behind Ambiades, and that was the end of that.


End file.
